Offmessage

How to draw anything; in 1 step.

You will no doubt have already seen this somewhere else, but if you haven’t you really should take a look at this story…

he did indeed take a photo every day for eighteen years, until the day he died, using a Polaroid SX-70 camera

I have often thought (in my more up my own arse moments) of Lego as a means of democratising the production of art. A well known cultural device from which one can easily build an essentially limitless range of things allows for subversion and creation without formal training in the means of production. Outsider art gets a leg up, and all that.

Here are two examples - classic photos reproduced in Lego (including the iconic tennis playing girl) and patching up  historic walls with Lego.

Sperm cube.  That is all.

Art from trash, in a very unexpected form.

Capturing images at the point that porcelain statues hit the floor.  Absolutely gorgeous.

Following rapidly on from those mugs I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, ilike points us at the new exhibition by Harland Miller at the White Cube, including marvellous subverted Penguin covers.

I love this - London’s Kerning, found at plastic bag.

Personally I am a huge fan of Banksy. His frequently situationist approach appeals to my rather simplistic view of art (hence my continued love affair with the work of Drummond and Cauty despite their long distant fall from grace). A good prank is a good prank as far as I’m concerned, and it’s hard to see what else there is left in current artistic endeavour. If we no longer care about skill in execution then comedy and shock are all we’ve got left.

Anyway. The real point of this post was this: Banksy mural obliterated by graffiti removal team. Much discussion over at MetaFilter.

Personally I reckon if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. His work (or at least his graffiti and his pranks) are by their very nature impermanent. Like smallpox and pandas their time will eventually come, and we should accept it. You can try and preserve them if you like, but let’s not get hung up about it if they pass.

I’ve never just linked to a random stranger’s Flickr account before, but cms_’s photos are fascinatingly simultaneously real and unreal. I’m a sucker for this type of urban abstraction. Done well (I think) it’s gorgeous, and these are definitely done well.